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When to bring IT in house?

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by the idealist

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My company currently outsources IT. We recently expanded and have more employees, more applications, more needs. I don't think that we are getting the kind of tech support that we need as it is, forget about when we add more people and new applications. I would like to suggest to the management that we hire someone in house to manage our network, provide IT support, etc. First, is this the best idea and second, if so, what kind of info would I have to give to the decision makers in order to convince them?

6 replies

by shady108

it is the best idea..

first of all it will end up cheaper...
you will have someone there 100% of the time , so no need to wait for someone to arrive if your network goes down.

and the most important one, having someone there permanently will mean that person will gain an indepth knowledge of your network layout, so if there is a fault they can identify it straight away.

whereas if you called for help from someone that doesnt know your network they can waste several hours first of all learning your layout and then locating the fault

im available if the wages are good lol :D

by shady108

a girl who works here with me is from cali she used to live in san francisco too so id love to come over !!!!!

the best way to get management to see sense is..... work out over the year how much they have spent on external IT help and also how many hours have been used. Work out how much an IT guy would want (we can haggle :) ).

also push the point that there sno substitute for an onsite it guy in relation to the response time and also the indepth knowledge they would gain of seeing the setup day after day

by absolutely

[i]First, is this the best idea and second, if so, what kind of info would I have to give to the decision makers in order to convince them?[/i]

Yes, having your own IT dept is better if your company needs exceed what your outsourcing partner provides. To convince the decision makers, I'd consider that they went with outsourcing in the first place to save $. I'd probably explain that this works in routine & best-case scenarios, and then pick a few situations with similarities to their imminent plans that they can't miss, and tell them why the outsourcing guys can't handle that workload, level of complexity, promptness or whatever.

by shady108

emphasise security. is it really a good idea for external IT people to know your companies passwords etc to access the systems?

what if that person left the company, they could potentially cause you grief :)

whereas if an internal person left you would know they have left and could change your passwords, u wouldnt necessarily know if an external person had left an external company

by absolutely

In another discussion, of a quite different IT topic
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/?p=591
I tried to make an argument for keeping IT in-house, as a general rule.
https://www.techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=102&threadID=250997&messageID=2409297
I think it was pretty well-received and generally a shared sentiment, but your argument is really much more pertinent to the concerns we discussed there, which lead some to think outsource is the right place for IT. You point out some very plausible risk factors that are not typically taken into account in that discussion, that I've seen.

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